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I paint small metal and plastic figures and rarely get to play with them. But that is fine with me.

21 February 2018

Clever Hans (Part 6 - SS Squad complete, more Winter scenery and Market Garden!?)

Here's the squad in an action scene next to the cabin that I also painted up this weekend. 
The last two troopers from my Winter SS squad were finished up this long weekend - the ammo carrier for my previously previewed LMG bloke and a cheeky crouching SMG trooper. Now they just need their Half-track painted up to cart them about the battlefield! Once again, I went with Oak Leaf camo that I think turned out okay on their uniforms and Pea Dot on their rolled up thingies strapped to their back. I really like Warlord metal minis, they've got some really good sculptors making lovely dynamic poses and full of character.


I swear these pics weren't out of focus when I reviewed them last night. O well. >_<





I've since started on my Heer Grenadiers squad and the platoon medic. Far less camo on these chaps, so they should paint up for more swiftly. Hope to have a post up on those later this week.

Next up is a small cabin by Charliefoxtrot Models. Cute little mdf kit that was exceedingly simple to build. I kept the paint scheme simple as well as the snow effects. I wish I could add Icicles (To all my Winter houses infact), but they'd not be very convenient for gaming purposes. 


Saturday saw myself and the good Densmol head over to the Ogres Den LGS in Orangevale for a Market Garden event organised by Travis Heitt. Not a tournament, but 5 or 6 tables all set up to represent the airdrop of Allied paras and the bridges that had to be held at all costs until the armoured units of the XXX Corps could reinforce their positions. Densmol and I teamed up as the German defenders on the Hells Highway table where we were to cause as much damage to the XXX Corps convoy and do our best to prevent them from moving off our end of the table and on to the first bridge. The game was exceedingly fun, though we both consistently rolled abysmal dice (14 Panzerfausts, a Pak40 and a Stug fired and missed or failed to damage) and failed to kill any of the British tanks on our table and the whole column just ran on through to the next table and the 1st bridge. 
Luckily our forces were able to withdraw once the situation got untenable and then move on as reinforcements on the next table. Not that they did much more there either! In the end, XXX Corps managed to hoss on through another two tables before they were stalled and finally started taking damage to their armour. A good day of gaming, regardless of how ineffectual Densmol and mine forces ended up being.




Our initial table. The British preliminary bombardments pinned all of our deployed units into complete uselessness. This allowed the Brit column to pretty much move up at full road speed and MG the crap out of everything with little to no ability to respond. Rubbish.

Two Pak40's, set up with great lines of sight down Hell's Highway. Shame only one was able to get a (missed) shot off all game before both were Machinegunned to death.

My StuG arrived from reserve, surely this tank hunting beast can pierce the flimsy side armour of those arrogant British!? Nope. Another miss.

British Recce Jeeps speed off the table to help the paras attacking the 1st bridge quickly followed by a Sherman. (In Sicily camo I think?) 
Fearing nothing that the German defenders were throwing at them, the Allied column presses on.

Game over man. Not a single casualty on the Brit side. A lot of dead and burning germans in return. 

The next table and we try to reinforce Craig's beleaguered Fallschirmjagers defending this bridge. Densmol did manage to brew up two jeeps, but my own forces were just a miserable as they were on the last table and only managed to gun down some of the Brit paras.  
British armour press on to try to reach the next bridge! (Which they did. :/)

Targets aplenty if only my StuG would come on from reserve. Which it wouldn't. After this 2nd game, we had to leave.
 Lastly, a kind gift arrived in the mail from a papanurgle forum mate in the UK to help fill out my daemons ranks so I can have enough ready to be able to play a game of Warhammer 40k with 8th Edition. Some 2000-and-something Pestigor beastmen that will be counts-as Plaguebearers and some beautiful 1st release Nurglings, enough to make 3 bases (Meaning I'll be able to plop down 6 total.). Some of my fav Nurgle models here - can't wait to get painting on these. (After, of course, I finish my Germans!)


This coming weekend will also see my good friend Stew (Check out his blog!) coming over for some Age of Sail action. Not sure what rules we'll be  playing, but be sure to see a little write-up on the game thereafter. 

24 comments:

  1. Terrific posting, Dai. There's enough going on to have lasted three of my postings LOL :-) Super painting, great scenery and a very enjoyable sounding battle too - the hobby doesn't get better than this imho.

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    1. Ooo, I don't know about that Simon, but yeah, bit more meatie than my typical postings.

      Thanks mate!

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    1. Thanks, I really do need to play more often.

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  3. I'm really digging your camo! These are great. ;)

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    1. Thanks man. Was do daunted before I gave them a go, but it's really not as much of a nightmare as I had feared.

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  4. Great to see you gaming 😀

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  5. Your photos of the battle turned out really well, Dai. I particularly enjoyed the StuG-cam. Made me feel like I was there.

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    1. Heh, I like to get a fig-level view in there for effect. Glad you liked, Matt.

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  6. Good stuff, man - Looks like it was a beautiful game!

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    1. Cheers Joel. The team really put on a good looking game for sure.

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  7. Models look great per usual!

    That scenario sounds like a blast! Too bad the dice didn’t cooperate. We all know how that feels. 😀

    See you soon!

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    1. Thanks Stew. It's a scenario I think I'd love to play again, though I think Densmol and I might try different tactics next time, as we really didn't have much of a plan going into this.

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  8. Awesome!

    Any learning points you could share about how the games were set up and/or linked? I love themed, narrative games days like this!

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    1. Thanks mate.

      Hrm, The games were all going at the same time. The Brits got TWO preparatory bombardments on us before the game even began and with decent to good rolls for pins and damage (We lost a Panzerschreck to the 1st one), it meant the units that were on the board at the beginning of the game had 4 pins each meaning they were near useless for the whole first turn. Add to that and with Road speed on the allied Jeeps and even Tanks meant they were in the grill of those poor useless pinned defenders and stomping them with nothing able to be done in return. Whilst this is, I guess historic, it made for a bit of an unfun start to our (Me and Densmol, the German players) game. Still, not everything of how the game turned out (We withdrew at turn 4 per the scenario rules due to having no AT assets remaining after [as described above] some of the worst dice rolling i've ever seen.), our tactics were not at all well thought out - I felt my StuG was best left in reserve to act as a reactionary element whereas it should have deployed 1st turn on the road and to heck if it was destroyed. After all, the idea was to slow/stop the allied column and one burning wreck really is as good as any other to do that job, right?
      THe scenario also only allowed the German player a single tank between the two players. I also misread the mission rules on list building and thought we were supposed to have a 600 point legal list each (Which meant we would only be able to fit in an inexperienced StuG in a list), but infact we could have made and split between us a full 1200 point list, which would have meant Densmol would have been able to plonk his Tiger on the table and be a REAL roadblock, that potentially might have been better able to cause more wrecks itself with it's .88 gun.

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  9. A nice looking game, and wonderful winter figures, atmospheric and superb!

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  10. Nice camo, I really like the cabin and sounds like you had fun at the market garden game, I have to say I'd feel a bit odd playing that game as my uncle lost his left leg in a brewed up sherman on that road, I guess I prefer the eastern front as there is no immediate relatives involved!
    Best Iain

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    1. Understand how you feel on that. Wasn't even sure I would be comfortable painting SS to be honest after memories of my Gran's stories of the German occupation of Greece.

      Eastern Front definitely is easier to feel detached from being that it's so distant like you say.

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  11. Great looking troops. Love how the snow has turned out on that cabin!

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    1. Thanks Simon. Just wish I could get a consistent effect over all my Winter terrain.

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  12. Great you got in some games, it can still be fun even if you roll like crap. I'm booked for Kublacon and am planning to be back in NoCal for the last week of May, first week of June.

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    1. O good to hear mate! I'll be sure to make sure to keep in touch so we can get together and roll some dice again.

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